“Must have had my ringer off.”
“Oh.” Just one loaded word before she turned back to Sasha and started talking about some wedding that they were planning together.
He tuned them out, letting his mind wander and taking in the party. He was supposed to be arm candy tonight, which was rich. This was the sort of place where his mother would feel comfortable. His father would stick out like a sore thumb. Jack and Bridget had become as adaptable as possible—they could pass for neighborhood kids at the corner bar, but they could also clean themselves up for fancy parties with their mom’s friends and colleagues. Maybe Michael had never bothered because he’d been older when their mom left, hadn’t needed as much mothering.
Tonight, he felt out of place. Not just because he’d made some half-hearted effort to not fit in, but because he hadn’t felt this sort of desperation to please someone since right after his mother had left. And even though plenty of water had flowed under the bridge of his parents’ divorce, he still felt like he wasn’t enough and had to try harder. That was why it was so much more difficult not to try at all.
He was ripped from his self-psychoanalysis by Sasha’s mentioning Senator Chapin. The same Senator Chapin who had cost his dad and Michael a government contract. The same Senator Chapin who was allegedly taking bribes and pulling strings he had no business pulling in city hall. Unfortunately, Jack hadn’t been able to get anyone on record saying that Senator Chapin had rigged some appropriations legislation so that one of his biggest donors would be sure to win a government contract.
“You’re planning Senator Chapin’s daughter’s wedding?” He injected himself into the conversation, even though he was playing arm candy.
“Yes, and Hannah is going to get a promotion because of it.” Jack liked how proud Sasha was of her friend and how they seemed to take ownership for each other’s successes.
For her part, Hannah just rolled her eyes and shrugged, obviously trying to downplay how important this was to her.
“That’s a big deal.” Jack tapped his glass to Hannah’s. “You should be proud of yourself.” She stiffened at his patronizing tone, and he could feel her pulling away from him. That was the whole point of dating her, but he couldn’t help wanting to pull out of the death spiral he’d initiated.
“It’s not a big deal,” she said. “Sure, it’s a big wedding for important people, but I’ve planned bigger events, and Sasha is helping me. She’s the real expert.”
“Hannah is being modest. She’s the one who planned tonight’s event, and she’s the most detail-oriented and organized person I know.”
“But you’re the one bringing the romance level way up,” Hannah shot back, trying to outflatter her friend.
This was what Jack liked about women most—other than boobs and the fact that they smelled really nice. Bridget and her friends were always earnestly trying to build one another up. He and his friends, on the other hand, were constantly busting one another’s balls. It could get exhausting. Just once, he’d like Chris or Joey to tell him how much his haircut made his cheekbones look good.
“And you’re the one making sure that all the bride’s demands are met.”
Jack’s mouth quirked up. He’d bet Hannah could cajole a caterer or a florist into doing just about anything. Hell, his dad could probably use her to shake down subcontractors. He shouldn’t think about her at the same time he thought about his family anymore. It wasn’t fair to either of them. He needed to focus on finishing out this story and moving on to covering politics.
“How much is the budget on this wedding?”
Sasha must have had plenty of champagne, because she jumped right in despite a look from Hannah. “Oh, we couldn’t reveal it.”
“It’s nothing we can’t handle.” Hannah must have thought he was questioning her ability to handle it. God, he hated having her mad at him. It seemed like he couldn’t say anything that night without it sounding crass or dismissive or patronizing. He’d flubbed up by being late and unkempt, but he wished that Hannah would just lay into him about that instead of acting like he’d suddenly turned into the enemy. The enemy being other men, the men she’d dated before who had let her down. He didn’t want to be that guy, wished he had another choice—
Then he saw Senator Chapin across the room, with his wife and presumably his daughter. And he had an idea.
“Can I get an introduction?” He interrupted Sasha and he felt bad about that. But he was eager to put his new plan in motion before he could think better of it.
Hannah looked him up and down. Her gaze lingered on his stained toga and unshaven face. “Are you drunk?”
“No.” That was true. Part of the plan for the night had been to get very drunk in a way that would infuriate Hannah, but he’d scuttled that as soon as he’d seen her. “I just might want to have an in for a story at some point.”
Hannah scoffed. “Like ‘How to Run for Senator and Win’?”
That hit him in the gut, though he supposed he deserved it after telling her how she should feel about her job. “Yeah, I’m trying to break into the political beat.”
Hannah paused and bit her lip. “Can I least get the grease off your toga first?”
He nodded, and she grabbed his hand, tugging him toward a dark hallway and into the bathroom.
“If you wanted a quickie before talking to the senator, you could have just asked.” He couldn’t resist making the joke. He might have decided that lying was off the table, but teasing and flirting were still very much on it. And after he’d explained things to her, sex would be very much on the table as well.
“Shut up.”
She had grabbed a bottle of club soda off a tray, and then doused the stain with it. While she worked, he had a chance to look at her. Her wig was off-kilter, probably from running around making sure everything was going smoothly all night and wondering where the hell her date was.
He reached out and straightened it, and she looked at him through the blunt bangs. He let his palm run down her cheek and wiped away a little bit of out-of-place eyeliner with his thumb. That afternoon, Chris had been complaining about how a girl he’d gone on a date with the night before had showed up in “full porn-star makeup” and went on to detail how makeup was just a tool women used to trap men. His best friend was an idiot, to be sure. And Jack couldn’t disagree more.
Maybe it was having a younger sister he’d had to help teach how to apply makeup so that the nuns wouldn’t send her home for harlotry, but he got that it wasn’t about fooling anyone. Makeup wasn’t about anything having to do with catching a man. Even with tons of black gunk smudged around her eyes, Hannah couldn’t hide from him. And the golden green of her eyes shone even brighter with all that dark around it.
The way she looked at him, as though his bad behavior had been forgotten, forced him to kiss her. And she opened up to him as though he’d been playing this whole thing the right way from the very beginning.
All of his worries about his new plan blowing up in his face fled, and her lush mouth filled him with the resolve to do whatever he had to do to keep her.
She pulled back, and her swollen lips quirked up in a smile. “Wipe your mouth.”
He looked into the mirror over her head and saw that her red lipstick was smeared over his face. He looked debauched and almost ruined. At least he looked how he felt.
God, he was such a maudlin asshole tonight.
“All done.” He looked down and, sure enough, the stain was gone.
“You’re magic.”
She shrugged again. “Would have been done sooner if you hadn’t kissed me.”
“I’m not going to not kiss you when I want to.” He put his hand on her lower back as they left the bathroom. An older woman saw them leave and appeared to be scandalized. He winked at her. “I’m going to kiss my girlfriend whenever I want.”
* * *
&nb
sp; —
HOLY SHIT HAD HER night turned around. Not only had Jack met and clearly impressed the senator, but Annalise was halfway in love with him. As soon as Jack went to the bar to fetch them drinks, her boss had caught her eye and fanned herself in the face. Apparently, Jack could charm even the ice queen herself.
That was probably why she’d never stood a chance once he’d turned his attention on her. It was why she hadn’t lied and told him that she had to stay and clean up after the party, even though they had a crew set up to do that. It was why—instead of telling him she was tired or had a headache—she was half in his lap in the back of a car. Why his mouth was on hers and his hands were under her skirt.
Truth was, he could have stood her up tonight and she probably would have forgiven him. She might have had a little heartburn about it, but she would have accepted any excuse. He hadn’t snuck around her defenses; he’d blown them to bits. If she had any sense of self-preservation, she would be questioning how much she felt for him. She’d be pushing him away, not taking him home with the full intention of doing everything but sex with him.
At some point, they’d have to talk about communication if she was really his girlfriend and he was really her boyfriend. But for now, his kisses were too heady, and she was just champagne drunk enough to ignore this evening’s indiscretions.
“You taste like champagne.” He sounded as though that pleased him, and it sent a shiver down her whole spine. He caught that and ran his hand up and down her back. “You should have brought a jacket.”
“I was so busy thinking about the party that I forgot that it would get cold.” She hadn’t needed to wear anything over her costume when going into the party.
“Next time, I’ll bring you one.” She liked the sound of all of that way too much. She liked that there would be a next time, but mostly she liked that he wanted to take care of her.
For so long, she’d been fighting letting anyone in. With Jack, she felt like she could just let go. So he’d made a few mistakes. She’d made enough in her past that she could forgive him. And if he ever found out that she’d said she’d go out with him to advance in her career, he might get mad. But she had to believe that what was real right now was the chemistry that fizzed between them when they locked eyes. The fire that raced over her skin when he touched her. The way he smiled at her that made her heart race.
Instead of telling him any of this, instead of scaring him as much as he terrified her, she kissed him until they got back to her place.
CHAPTER TWENTY
USUALLY, JACK WAS HAPPY when he was drinking beer. Maybe the happiest he ever was. And that wasn’t because of the beer. But when he was drinking a beer, he was usually around his friends or his family—people who got him and understood him. He was around the people whom he didn’t have to watch his words with. Being with his dad, Michael, Bridge, Chris, Patrick, and Joey never felt like a chore to him.
That was why he usually didn’t drink beer at work events. Work felt like scotch or something brown and smoky that he could have one drink of before he made an exit.
Maybe he felt unhappy because he didn’t want to be drinking beer in a dive bar whose scotch could not be trusted to celebrate the fact that one of his colleagues had just gotten a job with the New York Times. He knew that the powers that be at the site weren’t going to spring for Gene & Georgetti, but a place where anyone without socks was likely to catch dysentery was a new low, even for HM.
He didn’t like feeling jealous of his coworkers, and he knew it wasn’t a good look. But he was mature enough to admit to himself that he wanted what that guy had. And maybe he wanted more than what that guy had because he was still wanting his mommy’s approval. If he worked at the Times, it would be something that both his parents could brag about. The fact that he even thought about that made him want to reexamine his life choices. The fact that he was still after the same thing he’d been after since he was fourteen years old was probably what made the terrible beer turn sour in his gut.
The only source of sustenance—peanuts that had probably been in the same brass bowl for about a decade—didn’t give him much hope that he could settle his stomach anytime soon.
God, he was tired. He didn’t want to work on his assigned story, either. So making noises about a deadline wasn’t likely to get him moving out the door in the near future. Not even to escape the eighties power ballads pouring out of the ancient jukebox.
And maybe he was so jealous because of the huge contrast between what a guy who’d been hired a year after him had accomplished and his assignment—manipulating and using a woman who had blown his damned mind.
In fact, the only place he wanted to be right now was between Hannah’s sweet thighs. Ever since he’d slept in her bed, he hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything else. And after the dick pic and her nonreaction to his showing up late and disheveled to her work party, he hadn’t been able to come up with any new ideas for pushing her away.
Because he didn’t want to push her away. Everything in him only wanted to pull her in closer.
If only he had the courage to tell Irv to get his fluff piece from some other idiot and to tell Hannah the truth. Staring into the piss-colored brew, he even had a brief fantasy of going to work for his dad. Not even supervising like Michael, but doing the loud, noisy, dirty work he’d always hated. But maybe he’d only hated it because it had been the loud, the noisy, the dirty, that his mother had rejected and pushed away when she’d walked away from all of them.
And even though he’d started working on the school paper to spend more time with his girlfriend, he’d stayed with it because his mom had approved of his intellectual pursuits. The times she’d visited campus and taken him to lunch, she’d actually asked him about what he’d been working on and listened to his answers without pursing her lips.
He’d truly loved it, too. But he hated what he was doing now, and he couldn’t stomach hurting Hannah. Although she was a tough nut to crack, being around her made him feel easy, deep inside. When he woke up in her bed, he felt like he belonged there. Like every other woman he’d ever been with had been a practice run for Hannah.
But he’d given up on his own ambitions for a woman before. And he wouldn’t forgive himself if he chucked his job and Hannah still walked away from him. He refused to be the kind of sucker he’d been for every other woman he’d ever risked his heart on.
Didn’t make it any easier, though.
He hadn’t called her, which he knew had to hurt her feelings, but that wasn’t an intentional move. He just didn’t know what to say to her that would make what he was doing okay. Lying made him want to punch himself in the nuts. And telling her the truth would probably make her punch him in the nuts.
So his nuts were toast either way.
Concern for his nuts didn’t stop him from checking his phone to see if she’d called him. Disappointment kicked him near, but not quite directly in, his junk when he saw that he’d only missed messages from his dad and brother.
Before, when he hadn’t been deliberately trying to be a jackhole to women, he’d never not known what to do in a dating situation. He’d lived by the guiding principle of doing whatever it took to make his lady happy. And now, when he was trying—and somehow failing—to make a particular lady so unhappy with him that she would dump him, he was bewildered. For a moment, he wondered if this was how most straight men felt most of the time. And it rocked him back on his heels until his beer was empty.
He ambled over to the bar, calculating that he had one more beer’s worth of fake smiles and small talk in him before his façade cracked. He’d put in his order when he got a hard smack to the middle of his back that told him he wasn’t going to get out of this without talking to his boss.
“How’s the story going, kid?”
“Fine.”
“She dump your ass yet?”
The truth was that h
e didn’t know. Maybe the sex stuff after the Halloween party had just been a kiss-off, but that wouldn’t make a good story. He had to come up with something in the way of a status report. “Nah, but I’m on the right track.”
“You’re too pretty.” The tone of Irv’s words denoted that they were not a compliment. “With the outline you gave me of what you’ve already done, she should be trying to run you down with a car.”
Given his newfound empathy for the masses of idiots who didn’t know how to date, he begged to differ. “Nah. I think that she’s probably just so used to the kind of shit that I’ve been doing that she’s letting it roll right off her.”
His second beer arrived, and he ordered Irv another one. If he was going to listen to his boss tell him how pretty he was, he needed a bit more of a buzz on.
“I think you need to step up your game, kid.”
When he’d first started working at the magazine, he’d thought that Irv calling everyone “kid” had been charming. Tonight, it was grating. And he didn’t want to talk about this article anyway. It was bad enough that he actually had to write it in the first place.
He wanted to shift to the kinds of stories he should be working on. “Listen, I’ve done some more digging on that political story I mentioned. I talked to my dad’s buddy, and he has a guy who’s willing to talk—”
Irv totally just cut him off, which wasn’t new. But the anger brewing in him, the urge to hit something or yell, was brand-new. “I think you need to do some truly heinous shit to make this work—like cheating or asking her if she wants to ‘open up’ the relationship. I hear that’s a thing that all the kids are doing. Maybe you can even tell her that you’ve been married all along. That’ll definitely do the job—”
“You want me to lie to her?”
Not the Girl You Marry Page 18